About a year ago The Stilt, a well-known overclocker and power user from Finland, announced he was working on a software based overclocking application for the unlocked AMD Trinity APUs. The software goes by the name Trinity Control Interface - TCI K2 in short - and features an incredible amount of knobs and dials to tweak the Trinity K CPUs. It is without any doubt the most advanced tweaking utility for AMD's APU series. About a month ago, we covered the news of The Stilt's new application. He is/was working updated version on a unified software tool for all Trinity and Richland based processors featuring a solid GUI.

Yesterday, The Stilt announced in the HWBOT forums that he is throwing in the towel and has pulled the plug on this new application. According to The Stilt, the lack of support from AMD as well as the motherboard manufacturers makes it incredibly difficult for him to get anything done. Without the use of unconventional methods to get his hands on the information, it is almost impossible to get the software to run flawlessly. In addition, the support from the mainboard ODMs is, according to The Stilt, sub-par (with the exception of ASUS, it seems).

Here's his forum post on the matter:

I have had enough. I am ready to "pull the plug" on this project. I feel like a god damn Don Quijote.

The complete lack of communication makes this task impossible. At no point I have received any support from AMD or any of the motherboard vendors (Asus being a slight exception). It is like squeezing water out of a stone. Even for the smallest drops of information, I had to either bribe, blackmail or steal. The rest (99.5%) I had to figure out by myself, which I did well. On the top of that my work gets "erased" regular basis. Either by AMD or by the motherboard vendors.

AMD makes changes by changing the behaviour of the display driver (which controls everything on APUs). The motherboard vendors seem to have hard time following the design guidelines, which is the biggest spike in my flesh. The motherboard vendors put all of their resources on Intel platforms and none on AMD (cannot blame them really). Even after seven months after the launch of Trinity APUs the BIOSes are still in the "twilight zone".

The BIOSes are riddled with bugs and some of the "tweaks" the vendors use do more harm than good. They also rarely follow the official design guidelines so I cannot make a unified solution that would work on all motherboard. BIOSes are nothing like wine, they do not get better when they get older. They are more like an opened beer bottle. For every single fixed issue at least two more will emerge.

I have sent too many emails and used way too much time in trying to help the vendors to fix the issues. I have even sent them the fixed version of the actual code to make it easier for them to fix their BIOSes. Still they are not able / willing to do anything about it. I never asked any money or anything else from anyone (a one big f__king mistake really). If I would have been paid, let us say even 20 euros per each hour I have spent on ACI/TCI (or on the APUs in general), I would be around 15k euros richer.

Better go filling McDonald's™ job applications. Sorry guys

Honestly speaking, this is sad news. For those who don't know, we have been working together with Intel on a unified overclocking utility called XTU (more info: click) and I can fully relate to the problems The Stilt is dealing with. Unification is a very difficult process.

I would have expected more and better support from AMD. The company disappoints and is letting down many hardcore power users. The power user group, and the enthusiast marketing in general, is widely recognised as an important demography for any technology company. Not supporting this project (or any other similar project) seems like a bad move on their behalf. I sincerely hope that AMD will change its mind and support The Stilt on his mission